To continue this week’s exploration of all cheeses Irish thanks to Pong Cheese, this recipe pairs St Tola Ash Log with wild tri-cornered leeks. It’s once again the season for wild garlic but, living in London, tracking it down is a lifetime’s work. Tri-cornered leeks, on the other hand, pop up frequently in patches of woodland or people’s gardens. If you are lucky enough to find it, wild garlic would work equally well in this recipe.

Like this:

Well, it looks like the summer holidays have certainly taken their toll on my blog. Museum visits, cricket in the park and excessive ice-cream consumption (not to mention the small matter of doing some actual work on top) left little time for writing about cheese. And the more you feel guilty about not doing something, the harder it becomes to actually do it after a while. Fortunately, the schools have opened their doors once more and, at the same time, the cheddar-makers at Barber’s asked me if I’d like to develop a new recipe for their flagship 1833 brand. It was just what I needed to get back on the cheese-horse again.

It’s been a while since I posted a cheesy recipe on here but the lovely chaps at Wilde’s Cheese sent me away with such a mammoth cheese doggy-bag that I had two choices: use all the pieces to build a cheese igloo, or get my cooking cap on. As well as cheese, they also gave me a gorgeous bunch of wild garlic, the last of the season. I can only find wild leeks round here so this was a real treat. Searching for inspiration, I came across and slightly adapted this recipe, which seemed the perfect way to wed up some of my ingredients. The result was lovely, gritty cornbread, studded with melty bits of curd cheese. I halved the quantity of wild garlic in the recipe but even so it packs a punch, so probably not a great first date food. Fortunately, I am old and well past all that malarkey.

Seasonal food was in abundance this month as bloggers paired cheese with everything from asparagus from England to corn in the USA. Sweet, savoury, spicy and smoky all made an appearance in the recipes, as did cheeses from paneer to Cheddar, blue cheese and cream cheese. So, without further ado, here are May’s seasonal, cheeseonal recipes:Continue reading →

Like this:

This time last year I made a Sambocade, a medieval Elderflower and Cheese Tart. It was rather lovely but I think only four people ever saw the post and, judging by some of the Google hits I’ve been getting lately, most of them were probably looking for medieval gimp outfits or similar. I was tempted to make it again or even cheat and reblog it but instead – and given that I hate making pastry – I decided to plump for a more modern cheesecake.Continue reading →

Like this:

I seem to have gone a bit forage crazy, or as crazy as you can when you live in the proverbial concrete jungle. One plant that isn’t fussy about the air quality or proximity to rolling hills is nettles (although I read that if you live in the US, you have to buy them from special hippy stores – is that really right, Stateside folks?) I tried the blue cheese and nettle combination last year when I made Blue Cheese and Nettle Drop Scones and it was surprisingly good; the herbal, slightly fizzy taste of the nettles complementing the tang of the blue cheese.Continue reading →